Average swim time

Can't speak for the universe but I can give you some data points from a (pool) sprint tri I did last year that was 300 yards and included a lot of first-timers. I'll give times for my event then an adjusted number (+10%) to adjust approximately for yards/meters conversion:

50 percentile (median):  6:12 / 6:49

75 percentile:  7:08 / 7:51

90 percentile:  7:57 / 8:45

95 percentile:  8:35 / 9:27

Based on that, I'd view 9:00 as the minimum threshhold for adequacy.  That would put you in the worst 10% of a pretty weak field in that one event anyway, but you would still have some folks slower.

On a separate note, if you can at all afford it, consider getting a coach.  At my local YMCA I was able to get ten 45-minute lessons for $13.50 each - not free, but well worth it, and much less than most independent coaches would cost.

That help?

With pool swims, it is important that you get yourself seeded close to the time you are expecting to swim.  If you currently take 11:30 to swim it because you have to stop, do you think you will swim it differently when you have other people around you?  If you seed yourself too fast, then you will have to stop (or at least pause) at the wall if someone is trying to get around you. 

When is the race?  If it's less than a month from now, I would suggest swimming 100m (4 lengths) and then multiplying your time by 3.  If you're practicing a lot (like 4-5x/week) you'll probably improve slightly so take about 5-10 secs off per 100m and then use that as your time.  You may be a natural but it took me a year of swimming (not consistentlY)  before I went from being in the bottom 15% to about the bottom 40%. 

You don't have to be accurate to the second but you have to be in the ballpark. I know I seeded myself correctly when I only have to pass or get passed by 1-2 people during the whole swim.  They start you off time trial style anyway so you usually have at least 3-5 seconds between you and the next person so if you are off by say 20 seconds, that usually won't mean more than a couple of people you have to pass/or be passed by.  It's no fun if you miss by 3-4 minutes as you will be encountering an endless stream of irritated swimmers passing by you the whole swim (and it will slow you down even more). If you seed yourself well, you'll be amazed at how few people you run into...

Thanks are of your replys are making me feel more comfortable.  Even though this is my first one, I still want to do good for myself.  I am much stronger in running and decent in cyclying, but weak on the swimming. 

The pool length is 50meters and the lanes are 50meters wide. 

The event takes place June 26.  I have been swimming at least 3 times a week using workouts from Swimplan.com .  It has me doing about 24-30 laps to complete all of the different drills.  I am a pretty fast learner and ex college sprinter and football player. 

I also don't want to irrate people by putting a time that I can handle in the race and slowing people down.

My understanding of the OP was that s/he was looking for some information regarding pace of beginning swimmers and to use that to determine a time to shoot for.  I gave her some percentile paces from a similar-length pool sprint I had done with what seemed a reasonably high proportion of first-timers. 

After giving the data I thought it might be helpful to the OP to give a qualitative interpretation of a potential time to shoot for.  I felt that a middle-of-bottom-decile might be a good 'next' target - hopefully both seeming achievable and reassuring that it wouldn't be the slowest time in the field.

I chose to arbitrarily refer to that as a minimum threshhold for adequacy.  Maybe not perfect wording and others might have chosen other words, but I suspect that a sufficiently broad interpretation of the words in the dictionary would find them at least minimally appropriate .

that is not a pool that is the ocean

Wha? NO!  That's the kind of messed up logic that causes pool swims in tris to become such cluster****s.  If a swimmer can't even currently DO a 300 meter swim, there is highly unlikely their time will be anywhere near 3x their 100m time.  Maybe add 50% to each 100 or something would be more likely to be accurate as they get gassed or hang on the wall.

Lets start with a 100 time of say, 2:30:

2:30 +
3:15 +
4:52
-----------
10:37

Obviously we CANNOT come up with an accurate formula as there are too many variables to consider per each individual. However, simply extrapolating out from a shorter sampling time has the inherent error of not considering any type of fatigue or other causes of speed drop-off.  To iterate again, for a swimmer that cannot yet consistently do a distance of X, timing them at a fraction of x and multiplying that by the divisor just is a bad idea.

I'm totally on board with giving appropriate swim times for pool sprints... but I didn't get the impression that that's what the OP was asking for.  My guess was that this person learned English as second language so there's not great clarity with tenses, etc., but hopefully if the question was what time to enter for seeding it wouldn't have been phrased as a time to shoot for (?).

On the other hand, if we just want to make sure every pool sprint question gets proper seeding methodology responses just to be safe, can't say that's really a bad idea.

This is from the website of the race itself about the pool.

 A 300-meter dual-start pool swim with wide 50-meter lanes.  Its an Aquatic Center.

I can swim up/down non-stop then I have to take a 10 sec. breather before starting again.  Which would only be 50m. 

Thanks,

Keith

The guy is not racing for another 2 months.  If he's swimming regularly, he should be able to get to swimming 300m at his 100m time right now+ 5-10 sec.  Beginners improve rapidly. 

If he's not practicing much - he should be putting in close to the time he's putting in now - which is around 11:30.  If he swims 2:30 currently, and practices and gets coached consistently, he's going to be pretty close to 8:00.  He's an athlete so he knows what it'll take to improve - which is coaching and practice.  He'll probably reflect slower than that in the actual tri because the results usually take into account getting out of the pool and running some distance to the floor sensor that marks the end of the swim time.

All I'm saying is that he/she should try to time himself.  If 100m is all he can do before needing a 10 sec break, then he needs to add the 10s break then multiply it. Better than just picking some average time and guessing...

So you probably take about 1:45 to do 50m right now?  That's about 3:30/100m.  You'd probably be somewhere between 9-11min in 2 months depending on whether you get good coaching and consistent practice.  I think you'll be able to get to 9 minutes within months, then gains will slow down.  Definitely get some coaching as swimming isn't natural for most people (it certainly wasn't for me).  I'd encourage you to try the Learn-to Swim program from this website. It has helped me (along with some coaching).

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=1945

If you swim 3x/month, you should be able to get to Month 2 and you'll be able to swim 300m straight by that time.  If you follow that program (and have a coach look at your stroke), bet you'll be swimming close to 9 min for 300m by the time you race.

Regarding the pool - it's a 50m pool (length) and they're just saying that the lanes are wide (but they didn't say anything about how wide they are). 

This doesn't mean they're 50m wide by 50m long. They are 50m long and have wide lanes. Probably a bit wider than the standard YMCA lanes, but definitely not 50m wide.

They built it that way so people would quit complaining about pool swim triathlons.